The present invention relates to an improved roller construction for feeding paper in various types of machines, such as copiers, calculators, printers, computers and wherever else paper feeding functions are required.
By way of background, in the past relatively hard rubber rollers were utilized for paper feeding functions in various types of machines. These rollers were subject to certain shortcomings. In this respect, the rollers were relatively expensive to fabricate in that precision cutting and finishing procedures were required to make certain that the rollers were not out-of-round, as this could cause skewing of the paper being fed, or could cause extremely high pressure points on the paper, which could result in the tearing thereof. In addition, because of the relative incompressibility and inflexibility of prior art rollers, the surfaces thereof became glazed because of the retention of paper particles and the polishing action resulting in slippage between the rollers and the paper. This in turn resulted in defective paper feeding after a period of use, which in turn resulted in the necessity to either refurbish or replace the rollers. It is with the overcoming of the foregoing deficiencies of prior relatively hard paper feeding rollers that the present invention is concerned.